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en-usTechdirt. Stories filed under "morals"https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/td-88x31.gifhttps://www.techdirt.com/Fri, 5 Oct 2012 07:22:32 PDTWhy The MPAA Can't 'Win The Hearts And Minds' Of The Public: File Sharing Is MainstreamMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121004/12122520595/why-mpaa-cant-win-hearts-minds-public-file-sharing-is-mainstream.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121004/12122520595/why-mpaa-cant-win-hearts-minds-public-file-sharing-is-mainstream.shtmlmainstream, rather than a limited activity. The same group has now released a US version of its report, which more or less shows the same thing.

Americans downloaded more than 97 million albums and singles using BitTorrent during the first half of 2012, with Gainesville, FL named as the country’s “pirate capital” in an influential new report. Of the 97 million torrents downloaded across the USA, around 78 percent were albums and 22 percent singles. Assuming an album contains 10 tracks, the total number of songs downloaded would have surpassed 759 million in six months.

The report admits that not all of the songs being downloaded were unauthorized, but suggests that since many of them are, the characterizations are fair. Of course, just as we saw in the UK, all this really seems to show is how widespread file sharing is. It's not a marginalized effort hidden away from society, as some would have you believe, but something that a very large percentage of the population engages in on a regular basis.

A much more interesting (and relevant) report comes from Joe Karaganis who is teasing a larger new report that's about to be released concerning "copy culture" in both the US and Germany. The first tease discusses the attitudes of file sharers in the US about whether or not "it's reasonable" to do certain types of file sharing. And the results suggest that the MPAA's (and many politicians') belief that all they need to do is "educate" people is based on very little evidence. The key point is that, contrary to the assertions of some, the "moral" questions around file sharing are rarely black and white.

Karaganis explains that some seem to think that there are just two views of file sharing:

Let’s recall that there are two conventional ways of talking about the ethics of copying–both in relation to the theft of material property. First: that copying is not like theft because it is non-rivalrous–making a copy does not deprive the owner of the use of the good. For short, call this the Paley position–the defense of digital culture as a culture of abundance. Second: that copying is like theft because it deprives the owner of the potential economic benefit from the sale of that good (in the case of downloading, to the copier). Call that the MPAA position–the defense of culture as a market that depends on the scarcity or controlled distribution of digital goods.

Then, he notes that copyright laws were really built up around a specific type of copying: commercial copying rather than personal copying. And the data above certainly suggests that the views of people on any sort of "moral" question change depending on the context. But... also (and this is important) based on age. The younger generation just seems to believe that basic sharing with friends and family should be seen as perfectly reasonable. The different ways of slicing the data certainly suggest that the blanket argument that "piracy is theft" is going to completely miss its mark in educational campaigns. People just don't buy it.

First, that strong moral arguments against file sharing mistake the structure of public attitudes. Not surprisingly, the public engages in many of the same negotiations of context as the law. For most people, like theft and not like theft are not diametrically opposed moral judgements about copying. Rather, they operate on a continuum. They depend on the context and scale in which copying takes place. Copying, our data makes clear, is widely accepted within personal networks, reflecting a view of culture as not only shared but also constructed through sharing. Outside networks of family and friends, in contrast, a commercial and property logic tends to prevail. Support for more active forms of dissemination and ‘making’ available’ through such networks is quite low. Support for commercial infringement–selling copied DVDs–is minimal.

No matter what sort of "education" campaign you create, you're not going to convince most people that constructing a shared culture is somehow immoral. Furthermore, the generation gap issue is significant, especially given that much of the "education" efforts are aimed at the younger generation which seems a lot less willing to buy the argument.

...there is a strong generational divide in attitudes, with 18-29 year olds far more likely than older groups to view a wide range of copying practices as reasonable. This shift is strongest in relation to sharing within networks of ‘friends’–a category that has become very elastic in the last few years through the rise of online social networks. Among 18-29 year olds, sharing with friends is entirely normalized and large in scale. On average, ‘copying from friends/family’ accounts for nearly as much of music file collections as ‘downloading for free.’ What are the reasonable boundaries of such a network? My siblings? My five closest friends? My 500 Facebook friends? Or the 5000 music aficionados who subscribe to a private file sharing network? This is where the rubber hits the road as people develop their own digital ethics. The law has not begun to address it, and educational efforts to convince people that sharing within communities is theft are likely doomed.

This, of course, is the point that we've been trying to get at for many, many years. No matter what your personal feelings are, you're not going to convince everyone else just by making a blanket moral argument that they just don't buy into. Instead, it's time to move to a more reasonable strategy (more on that shortly...).

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]]>game overhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20121004/12122520595Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:20:24 PSTWould You Rather Be 'Right' Or Realistic?Mike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/04401917888/would-you-rather-be-right-realistic.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/04401917888/would-you-rather-be-right-realistic.shtmlwrote about the excellent comic from Matthew Inman's The Oatmeal to highlight how companies turn would-be buyers into infringers by not making the content available. Here's a snippet.

In response, some folks sent over columnist Andy Ihnatko's response, in which he suggests the comic is actually representative of the sense of entitlement that people feel towards such content. Ihnatko's writeup is slightly amusing as he tries to mock those consumers for actually having an opinion on how they consume content and concludes with this basic statement:

The world does not OWE you Season 1 of “Game Of Thrones” in the form you want it at the moment you want it at the price you want to pay for it. If it’s not available under 100% your terms, you have the free-and-clear option of not having it.

I sometimes wonder if this simple, grown-up fact gets ignored during all of these discussions about digital distribution.

I was going to write a rather long response to why this is kinda silly, but Marco Arment did a better job than I ever would in explaining the difference between being "right" and being "pragmatic." You really should read the whole thing, because it involves a rather detailed example involving the physical layout of a restroom. I'm going to skip over that part and highlight the summary point, but it's worth reading the full thing:

We often try to fight problems by yelling at them instead of accepting the reality of what people do, from controversial national legislation to passive-aggressive office signs. Such efforts usually fail, often with a lot of collateral damage, much like Prohibition and the ongoing “war” on “drugs”....

[....]

Relying solely on yelling about what’s right isn’t a pragmatic approach for the media industry to take. And it’s not working. It’s unrealistic and naive to expect everyone to do the “right” thing when the alternative is so much easier, faster, cheaper, and better for so many of them.

This point could be seen as the central theme of many of the 40,000 plus posts that have been made on this blog: dealing with reality is always going to be a more effective way to go about things than taking some "moral" stand on how things "should" be. And, if you can deal with the realities and it actually solves the whole moral "I'm right!" part at the same time, what good is it to not deal with realities?

Taking the point even further, there's a simple fact of today's world, which is that consumers have power. Ihnatko's entire point seems to assume that this consumer power is "entitlement." I tend to think of it as consumers making their will known -- and that tends to lead to better products that should make everyone better off. What Ihnatko ignores is that a market is not determined by just one side. It's the interplay between buyers and sellers, and if the buyers aren't happy, they express that to the sellers in certain ways -- and infringement is one of those ways. It's a market signalling method. I'd argue that it's just as much an "entitlement" mentality by the "sellers" to pretend that only they get to decide what the consumer should be able to get, without listening to what the consumer wants.

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]]>being-right-in-fantasy-land-doesn't-help-much-in-the-real-worldhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120227/04401917888Fri, 6 Nov 2009 18:47:14 PSTThe Moral Argument In Favor Of File Sharing?Mike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091106/0128326820.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091106/0128326820.shtmlmoral question to consider when it comes to copyright, if you can first show a situation where everyone is better off (i.e., if the end result of content being shared, willingly, is better for both the content creators and consumers, why should morals even be a question?). Separately, I have made clear that I do not engage in any sort of unauthorized file sharing -- noting that it is illegal and, I personally believe, wrong. Some people have pushed back on that latter point, suggesting that my labeling it as "wrong" is, in fact, a moral statement as well. A couple months ago (yes, I'm slow, but I'm catching up on some old "saved" submissions), SteelWolf sent over some thoughts on why file sharing is not wrong, and why there's actually a moral argument in favor of sharing:

It is through sharing that we develop a culture and advance humanity. Creative works like art and music are, at their core, about sharing with others. They tell stories, reveal personalities, or comment on the world in ways that others can appreciate, forming a part of our culture as they are spread around. Gregor Mendel's discoveries about genetics had no value while they were gathering dust on the monastery bookshelf; it is only when those discoveries were shared with the world that they became vital.

Infinite Goods Should Be Shared

Say you have something that is good for others, and it is infinite, so you will not lose any of it by giving some away. I don't think it's a stretch to say that most people's idea of morality would dictate that they should share that thing. In general, information is something that can be seen as a public good. If somebody has a discovery or an idea, it costs nothing to give it away, it is not scarce, yet it can potentially benefit the world.

On this, I absolutely agree -- but it is much more the argument for why the content creators themselves should share their content first. And that's where things get tricky. I do think it makes sense to share content. I think that content creators would find themselves better off if they share their works (and do so strategically, in combination with a business plan that takes advantage of it). But what if the original creator doesn't want the content shared? Then what?

SteelWolf argues that there's a moral imperative to share, but again, this seems to apply more to the content creator, than those downstream:

Faced with an infinity of good things in the form of content information, why would somebody chose not to give it away? What is gained by hoarding something that can help others and costs nothing to share? Let's say you figure out that you can protect people from a deadly virus, say, influenza, with a vaccine. While it costs something to manufacture physical vaccines and mail them to everybody in the world, sharing the information behind it is free. Others can chose whether or not they want to invest money in creating their own, but sharing has given them the option to do so where before it did not exist. Faced with this situation, who would chose to let thousands of people perish by denying them even the potential opportunity to save themselves?

Yet this is exactly the choice many people are making in the name of "intellectual property." They would rather see others suffer than share something infinite with them, desperately clinging to business models that depend on scarcity. In the 21st century, ideas, information, digitized content are all infinitely available. For these things, the Star Trek replicator has been made, and it's time to use that as a stepping stone to greater things.

Faced with an infinite supply of information that can potentially benefit billions of people, I chose to share. Those who try to hoard this information are both attempting to drink the ocean and doing wrong.

While I think this is interesting, and at times compelling, in the end I'm still not convinced there's a moral component here, except potentially for the creator/innovator. But, at the same time, I still believe that we're better off taking the moral discussion out of it. Perhaps a moral argument like the one above is helpful to convince some, but it leads right back to the economic discussion, where some will ask why anyone would bother in the first place, if they're just told they need to give it away for moral reasons.

Instead, I'm more convinced by economic arguments that show greater opportunity in sharing infinite goods, in that it decreases the cost of creation, promotion and distribution, while making it easier reach a larger audience for selling scarce products. Again, if you can make the economic argument, and then throw in the moral benefits of spreading information on top of it, that makes sense. But a purely moral argument still falls a bit short for me. Still, I'm sure it will lead to an interesting discussion here.

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]]>is-it-wrong?https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20091106/0128326820Tue, 29 Jan 2008 04:35:09 PSTU2 Manager Says Google And Its Hippie Friends Should Pay The Recording IndustryMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080129/014416102.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080129/014416102.shtmlSilicon Valley's "hippie values" for creating the problem, and demanding that tech companies of all stripes start paying the recording industry. He's talking not only about ISPs, but also Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and basically every other successful tech company. There are so many problems with this, it's difficult to know where to begin, but let's tackle a few of the quotes:

First he blames these companies who have "built multibillion dollar industries on the back of our content without paying for it."

This is a common refrain from those in struggling industries, but it's meaningless. Complementary goods are a natural for building bigger markets, but no one expects one side to pay the other just for moral reasons. The oil industry's success is built on the backs of the automobile industry, but does the automobile industry demand that oil companies have a moral obligation to pay them? Computer makers have built a multibillion dollar industry on the backs of the internet and software companies -- yet, no one says they have a moral obligation to pay those companies anything. Travel guides have built huge business based on hotels and restaurants around the globe, but does anyone think that those travel guides owe the hotels and restaurants money for doing so? Hell, the recording industry itself was built off the backs of complementary goods such as radio, yet when they paid radio stations, it was known as payola and outlawed.

These companies, McGuiness claims, need to help out "not on the basis of reluctantly sharing advertising revenue, but collecting revenue for the use and sale of our content."

Uh huh. And I guess that automobile companies should be collecting revenue for the oil companies. And, home builders should be collecting revenue for the electricity companies. And, airlines should be collecting revenue for the hotel industry. You see, these are all separate industries. They may be complementary, but it's up to each one individually to figure out the business models that work. None should be pressured into saving the other from its own missteps.

"I call on them to do two things: first, taking responsibility for protecting the music they are distributing; and second, by commercial agreements, sharing their enormous revenues with the content makers and owners."

This is beginning to sound an awful like journalists who claim that Google has a moral obligation to "share revenue" with newspapers.

He claims that what all of these companies do is the equivalent of a magazine that "was advertising stolen cars, processing payments for them and arranging delivery."

That makes for a nice soundbite but has nothing to do with reality. First there's the little problem that nothing is being stolen here, only copied. Second, none of these companies are "processing payment" for unauthorized transactions. Third, none of them are "arranging delivery." It would be like the same scenario, but blaming the guys who paved the road on which the car was driven.

"Embedded deep down in the brilliance of those entrepreneurial, hippie values seems to be a disregard for the true value of music."

First, this shows a misunderstanding about the difference between price and value. It also misunderstands the culture of Silicon Valley, which is generally more libertarian these days than "hippie."

On top of all this, McGuiness is whining about this at the same time that U2 is pulling in incredible profits, making $355 million on its last tour. You know what helped fuel some of that? The fact that a new generation of fans are learning about U2 from downloading its music for free. Not only that, since they don't have to stretch their entertainment dollars as far on buying the actual music, they can pay the exorbitant concert ticket prices that U2 is charging these days.

The problem here isn't that others are letting the recording industry languish. It's that just about every other industry has realized that there's plenty of money to be made in the music industry. As we've pointed out, just about every aspect of the industry is doing fantastically well. More money is being made on concert revenue than ever before. More artists are making music than ever before. More music is being heard than ever before. Even more musical instruments are being sold than ever before in the past. Yet, because one segment of the market (the one selling plastic discs) is unwilling to take some simple steps to change its business model, everyone else has to pay up?